It was their will, however, to be caught; but at the end of four or five hours' fishing, he was interrupted again by the appearance of the same old servant, who now approached, bearing on his arm a basket evidently well laden. "Sir Walter desired me to compliment you, sir," he said, "and to wish you good sport. He prays you, too, to honour him by supping with him, for he will not interrupt your fishing by asking you to dine. He has sent you, however, wherewithal to keep off hunger and thirst, and trusts you will find the viands good. Shall I spread them out for you?" There is no sport in the world better calculated to promote the purposes of that pleasant enemy, hunger, than throwing the long light line over the clear brook; and the angler who, in the busy thoughts of other things, had left chance to provide him with a dinner, willingly availed himself of the good knight's hospitable supply, and did ample justice to all that the basket contained. But there was something more in his feelings on this occasion than the mere gratification of an appetite, though the satisfaction of our hunger has proved a magnificent theme in the hands of our greatest epic poets. There were other feelings in the breast of the angler, as he sat down and partook of the viands provided for him, which rendered these viands grateful to the mind as well as to the body; and though the beauty of the scene around, the freshness and splendour of the bright spring day, the wooing of the soft air by the bank of the river, the music of the waters as they glided by him, and the carols of manifold birds in the neighbouring woods, were all accessories which might well render a meal, tasted in the midst of them, not only pleasant at the time, but memorable in after days, yet there was something more than all this which made the little basket of provisions thrice agreeable to him; something that made him believe he had been understood, as it were intuitively, by the only persons he would have stooped to seek in the neighbourhood, if he could have stooped to seek any one; something, perhaps, beyond that which may or may not be rendered clear hereafter, as the reader's eye is obscure or penetrating into the secrets of the human heart and character. He received, then, the gift with gladness, and sat down to partake of it with something more than hunger. He accepted willingly also the invitation to sup at the Manor House; and bestowing a piece of money on the serving man, which amply repaid the pains he had taken, he suffered him to depart, though not till he had lured him down the stream to see several trout brought out of the bright waters with as skilful a hand as ever held a rod. The fisherman was still going on after the old servant had left him, when he was suddenly roused by a rustling in the high-wooded bank above; and the moment after, he saw descending by a path, apparently not frequently used, a personage upon whose appearance we must dwell for a moment.